Monthly Archives: December 2010

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Does ‘the apprentice’ need cultural capital?

Joanna - sacked for lack of cultural capital?
Joanna - sacked for lack of cultural capital?

Stuart got fired for being full of s**t, Jamie got fired for being a bit wet, but did Jo get fired because of her lack of cultural capital?

We use this concept of Bourdieu’s in the AS Sociology of education to explain why middle class kids do better in education – Stephen Ball pointed out – middle class parents have better skills when it comes to researching schools; they know how to work the system to their children’s advantage  and are more able to relate to teachers because they share a similar cultural background and world view.

This might be forcing the use of the cocnept a bit – but I think Jo got sacked because of her lack of cultural capital. In this case her previous experience simply meant she didn’t have sufficient formal knowledge of how business worked on a scale above the level of her own relatively small cleaning firm.

Firsly in the interview process she was disadvantaged because she hadn’t researched Alan Sugar’s company – and the idea of doing this in fact seemed totally alien to her her. Secondly, she just looked like a total fish out of water in the formal setting of the interview.

Having started up her own cleaning business from scratch, I imagine Jo had never gone through the whole formal job- interview process – unlike the two winning candidates who would have been very used to the necessary formalities. This was totally unlike Chris who said ‘I was told (thus having the cultural capital) that in an interview you should give calm, measured responses – or something along those lines.

And I may be wrong about this – but she seemed to think that being the apprentice meant being trained up – as in being taught about business – It’s as if she thought she was going to get a crash course in basic degree level business if she won – she seemed to be desperate for an business education. The two that got through had already had that – Chirs with his academic background and Stella would have got that through her 10 years in her previous company.

So despite showing more aptitude in winning more tasks than both of the two finalists, Jo appears to have been sacked because of her lack of cultural capital relative to the other two candidates. Becasue of their educational and business advantage previous to the interview processs, they are going to be more able to fit into Alan Sugar’s business. Basically, unless all the other candidates were clearly worse, and in this case they weren’t, Joanna – a working class woman with no formal business training only used to running a small cleaning business – was doomed to fail from the start.

Research Methods

Public attitudes towards benefit claimants

The results of the latest British Social Attitudes Survey are out today (or mabe yesterday by the time this goes up!) – one of the sections is on attitudes to benefit, taxation and inequality.

According to the Daily Telegraph today – the British Public are more right wing than under Thatcher.

“A major analysis of social attitudes over the last three decades also found fewer adults wanted the Government to redistribute income and many believed inequality was down to “individual laziness on the one hand and hard work on the other…  public opinion is “far closer” to many of Thatcher’s core beliefs than it was when she left office. [Also] after 13 years of a Labour government, the study found more people were against disproportionately taxing the better off.

Summarising the report further the article says –

Asked why some people were “in need”, 26 per cent said they were lazy and 38 per cent said inequality was simply an inevitable consequence of modern life.

Only 57 per cent of people said the Government was responsible for reducing inequality – compared with 64 per cent two decades ago – and just 36 per cent said the Government should redistribute income.

The study also found only a quarter of people believed the Government should spend more on benefits – half the number that believed this in the mid- to-late 80s.

Miss Young added: “The survey points to a nation at political crossroads between left and right: it is perhaps little surprise that the election resulted in a Coalition. On the one hand we are seeing a hardening of attitudes towards welfare reform whilst on the other there is strong support for investment in health and education.”

However, if you read the summary of the report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation they point out that according to their previous research most people strongly supported progressive tax and benefit system and were supportive of targeted interventions to improve life chances for the disadvantaged, when presented with evidence about unequal life chances.

It’s worth bearing in mind that British Social Attitudes Survey does ask very general questions without any context. If, as JRF says, and if, as I do in AS Sociology right at the beginning of the year, you contextualise poverty by looking at the experience of being poor and focussing on lack of opporunity, you generally get a more symapethic left wing view.

However, in wider society (with the exception of those ‘how the other half live programmes’ which were on recently which were sympathetic to people living on benefits) the public generally don’t get to see the wider context of why people are on benefits – they just see J Kyle blaming the poor for being poor. Unfortunately lack of context means ignorance about the issue – and ignorance breeds intolerance.

Robert Reiner in ‘Law and Order’ also argues that neo-liberal societies tend to breed intolerant attitudes – people generally have harsher attitudes to those less fortunate to themselves – blaming other people for their own misfortune, when of course the reality is that the neo-liberal state (if you follow Harvey) has actually create more unemployment and less stable jobs that lead to more people being on benefits.

Now I’m feeling depressed – time to go drink some spiritual gin – well it is Christmas after all!

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Kirsty and Phil’s unrealistic christmas

kirstie-phil-christmas-lgNow after everything I’ve said about the Marxist view of the family not being especially relevant anymore up pop this obnoxious pair of petit-bourgeois media lovies to prove me wrong.

In the show this utterly detestable pair demonstrate how much money you could be spending this Christmas – typically visiting some upmarket gift shops and food stalls to purchase a bewildering array of non-necesseties to make that ‘speical day’ extra special.

How utterly bourgois this is – this kind of month long ‘make everything yourself build up’ is great if you happen to be earning £200 000 a year (just an estimate) as a TV presenter – then you’ve got the time and the money to invest.

For the average person, however,  all this show is going to do is enhance the sense of relative deprivation about how poor their own Christmas is by comparison and encourage them to put even more money on their credit card.

There’s even something hyper-real about this show – I’m sure they alter the colour filters on the cameras to give it that extra reddy-warm Christmas feel – if you know what I mean.

Now my advice is to pick up the remote – switch off the TV – stand up – go over to said TV – unplug – period – now welcome to YOUR reality. And if you must celebrate christmas, don’t over consume, it really won’t do anything to give you or anyone else meaningful, lasting, deep-rooted happiness.

Book reviews, summaries and excerpts

Neo-Liberalism’s evil freedoms

PolanyiThe Marxist Thinker Karl Polanyi’s conception of ‘good and bad’ freedoms offers a useful starting point for criticising the recent tory cuts.

Below is a lengthy ammended passage from David Harvey’s ‘a brief history of neo-liberalism’. I was going to wait and publish the whole summary once I’d finished it (obviously within copyright limitations!) but I read this on the train this morning and it was just so pertinent I had to upload it asap!

Karl Polanyi in 1944 pointed out that in a complex society the meaning of freedom becomes contradictory. There are, he noted, two types of freedom, one good the other bad. Among the ‘ bad freedoms’ he listed ‘the freedom to exploit ones fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage. Polanyi argues that all of these types of freedom throve under a competitive market (capitalist) economy. However,  this same capitalist system that is responsible for these ‘evil freedoms’ also gives rise to ‘god freedoms’ that most of us cherish – such as Freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom to choose one’s own job. 

According to Polanyi we need greater regulation of the market in order to achieve a greater amount of ‘good freedoms’ for the majority. We need, for example to restrict those types of freedom such as ‘the freedom to make gains from others without giving a commensurable service back to the community’ and this should result. In Polanyi’s own words…

‘The passing of the market economy can become the beginning of an era of unprecedented freedom. Judicial and actual freedom can be made wider and more general than ever before; regulation and control can achieve freedom not only for the few, but for all… Industrial society can afford to be both just and free.’

Unfortunately, Polanyi noted, the passage to such a future is blocked by the ‘moral obstacle’ of liberal utopianism (read ‘neo-liberalism) in which…

‘Planning and control are being attacked as a denial of freedom. Free enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials of freedom. No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free. The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery. ‘

The idea of freedom ‘thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise. This means a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property.’ But if, as is always the case, ‘no society is possible in which power and compulsion are absent, nor a world in which force has no function, then the only way this liberal utopian vision could be sustained is by force, violence and authoritarianism. Liberal or neoliberal utopianism is doomed, in Polanyi’s view, to be frustrated by authoritarianism, or even outright fascism. The good freedoms are lost, the bad ones take over.

text in this blog adapted from this!
text in this blog adapted from this!

Polanyi’s analysis appears particularly relevant today given the following

  1. 1. America has persistently used military force, both covertly and overtly, to install neo-liberal states which protect the property and profit rights of the wealthy while stamping on the rights of the majority to basic public services, freedom of expression and association. Read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, for the evidence.
  2. 2. Many Corporations have profited from natural disasters and war – Halliburton and Blackwater being the most obvious.
  3. 3. You might also want to look up how Goldman Sachs is profiting from dealing in basic food supplies, pushing prices up. Sachs profits, while people in the developing world starve. Will post on this rather complex issue later.

This is a great moral and philosophical tradition from which to argue against the Tory Cuts – by cutting Corporation Tax and encouraging them to use tax havens, the Tories are allowing the elite class to have even more freedom, but by cutting public services and hassling 12 year olds that want to protest, they then limit the freedom of expression of the majority.

The argument we should be making against the Tory cuts is that there is a direct relationship between the elite class having too much of the wrong kind of freedom – these are the freedoms which cause social problems.

TORYS – IF YOU WANT THE PROTESTS TO STOP YOU NEED TO LIMIT THE EVIL FREEDOMS OF THE FEW – THE FREEDOMS WHICH HURT THE MAJORITY

Things I like

What would Jesus buy?

Hi and welcome to a seasonal series of blog posts – ‘Subverting Christmas…’ To get you thinking about how utterly co-opted this fesitival has become by the dictates of Capitalist Consumer Culture.

To start off with, this looks like a good documentary – from the ‘Church of stop shopping’ – called ‘What would Jesus Buy’ ?

A quote from the Church’s leader Reverend Billy ”We’re trying to get people to slow down their consumption.. we’re addicted. we’re conflited, hypnotised, consumerised”

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Agenda setting in cyberspace

Don’t trust those comments or ratings you see on websites – they may well have been manipulated by organised corporate, state or right wing interests.

From a very interesting post by Monbiot today – on ;’astroturfing’ –

“An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilisations, but which has in reality been organised. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country. But many of them aren’t upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays 5 mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write. “

And here’s a member of the rightwing Teaparty suggesting how to distort the ratings on books with political content on Amazon –

“Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books”. I go through and I say “one star, one star, one star”. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. …

So don’t trust those comments or ratings you see on websites – they may well have been manipulated by organised corporate, state or right wing interests.

Things I like

Shirt of Social Order

Shirt-of-social-order

Not quite as aethsetically pleasing as ‘the coat of many colours’ but I think this has more analytical value.

This  shirt demonstrates the class structure in modern Britain! This is taken from It is the first ever
exhibition that examines how British artists – and many others – have represented the shape of their society from the Renaissance to the present.

I found this at my latest ‘web site of the week’ – FlowingData

From the web site -‘Flowing data explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better – mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.’

But what can I do?

Anti-terror police hassle schoolboy over picket of Cameron’s office

Nicky Wishart was recently pulled out of his class at school to be questioned by anti-terror police.

Nicky, aged 12, a pupil at Bartholomew School, Eynsham, Oxfordshire, organised a picket of David Cameron’s office through Facebook to highlight the plight of his youth centre, which is due to close in March next year due to budget cuts.

The protest, which was due to take place on Friday, had attracted over 130 people on Facebook, most of whom are children who use youth centres in Cameron’s constituency, Witney.

Wishart said that after the school was contacted by anti-terrorist officers, he was taken out of his English class on Tuesday afternoon and interviewed by a Thames Valley officer at the school in the presence of his head of year. During the interview, Wishart says that the officer told him that if any public disorder took place at the event he would be held responsible and arrested.

So how does one interpret this?? Surveillance society – monitoring protest groups on Facebook… police using coercive measures to put off children from expressing their right to protest.

Nick should have cited the UN convention on the rights of the child to them –

Article 12 (Respect for the views of the child): When adults are making decisions that affect children, children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinions taken into account.

Article 13 (Freedom of expression):Children have the right to get and share information, as long as the information is not damaging to them or others. In exercising the right to freedom of expression, children have the responsibility to also respect the rights, freedoms and reputations of others. The freedom of expression includes the right to share information in any way they choose, including by talking, drawing or writing.

 Incidentally, I checked out the Facebook group – which is now closed

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Politicised youth…?

A good speech from one of the students who was kettled a couple of weeks ago….’We are no longer the X-factor generation….school children learnt a lot from how the media and the police responded to their protests… school children who used to think tube strikes were annoying are now standing in solidarity with striking tube workers’ great stuff…..  

 

Although the accent doesn’t exactly suggest working class comprehensive school! I also wonder how many school kids were there to protest about the issue and how many were there just for a day off, how many for the ruck? These are the kind of things that you can never be certain of – very difficult to research with any level of validity.